Click: It's Mommy Time(s)
This is not about mommy taking off time — for herself. This is about mommy taking on Times — the New York Times — after its recent controversial article about mommy bloggers..
Mommy bloggers who felt the article was condescending and insulting are making their cases in the modern version of the town hall meeting.
Mommy is mad as hell and she's not going to take it anymore.
Though I don't know how many mommy
bloggers would say they are feminists — to me, this battle feels
familiar. Or maybe there's something about the New York Times as the voice of authority that pushes women's buttons.
40 years ago the New York Times Magazine published a controversial piece describing the selection process when Yale College went coed after 300 years as an all-male institution. That article was just the beginning of the buzz surrounding the arrival of women in New Haven.
I showed up to register on my first day to find the campus swarming with reporters. Immediately, I was approached by a reporter from the New York Times — and I won't ever forget his question: Do women deserve to be at Yale?
Click.
In the women's movement, click was the word for the "aha" moment of recognition. Though it would take months before I learned the word feminist to identify myself, that question was when it dawned on me where I stood as a woman.
My generation of feminists was considered angry; possibly in part because we were forced to break down barriers to enter places and careers that had been closed to us. With most doors open, most of the anger has dissipated.
Mommy bloggers aren't one size fits all; we don't represent all women; or all women bloggers. The community and its marketing muscle attracts sniping from both inside and outside — though it's pretty anachronistic to think blogging is so different from other home-based businesses based on networking — such as the armies of women selling Avon or Mary Kay.
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